While the nation was busy obsessing over Anthony Weiner’s private parts, we missed what should have been by far the more important story: his wife, Huma Abedin. As deputy chief of staff to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton — and by many accounts, her closest aide — Huma Abedin is privy to many state secrets. This is disturbing because Abedin’s immediate family members are more than tangentially involved in the Islamist cause. Not just Muslim. Islamist. As in: militant Islam. The enemy. In plain English: Someone with close ties to our enemies has an extremely high-level position in our State Department. Hello? Anyone awake?

According to Walid Shoebat and Ben Barrack writing at Pajamas Media, Huma Abedin’s mother, Saleha Abedin, who lives in Saudi Arabia, is a member of the Muslim Sisterhood (also known as the International Women’s Organization), the women’s arm of the radical, terrorist-spawning Muslim Brotherhood. In addition, Huma’s brother, Hassan Abedin, has worked to promote the Islamic agenda from his base at Oxford University.

A report from 2007 identifies Naseef as the likely force behind the Abedin family’s abrupt departure from Kalamazoo, Michigan, to Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, circa 1977 – the same year that the Muslim Sisterhood was established.

In 2009, Qaradawi’s role within Oxford and the Muslim Brotherhood was championed by the notorious Sheikh Rached Ghannouchi of Al-Nahda – a Muslim Brotherhood affiliate now active in Tunisia. OCIS has even presented an award for great scholarly achievement to Brotherhood member Shaykh Abd Al-Fattah Abu Gudda, whose personal history goes back to the Brotherhood’s founder, Hasan al-Banna.

Even the Sunday Timesacknowledges that the cradle of Islamic jihad — Al-Azhar University — actively attempts to establish links with OCIS, where Huma’s brother serves.

Huma’s brother, Hassan, has also worked on projects with Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, whose goal is “spreading Islam to the west.” Alwaleed bin Talal is one of those Saudi princes who has credibility with many in America because of his personal connections, philanthropic donations, and investments (notably, he owns seven percent of NewsCorp, the parent of FOX News, making him the second-largest individual shareholder). But meanwhile, the prince gives huge financial support to radical Islamist groups masquerading as “moderate” — including the Cordoba Initiative (Ground Zero mosque), CAIR, and the Islamic Development Bank (promoting shariah-compliant finance, which inherently and by design promotes the spread of shariah).

Was Huma unaware of all this as she accompanied Hillary Clinton to the Dar El-Hekma women’s college in Saudi Arabia? Huma’s mother is co-founder and vice dean at the college and an active missionary on issues regarding Muslim women.

I got so confused while trying to make my way through the tangled web of connections that I had to make a diagram — somewhat simplified — to keep it all straight. (In case you’re wondering, the dotted line from Weiner to Hillary is there because of Hillary’s support — at least, until recently! — of Weiner’s political ambitions. Bill Clinton was even the officiator at Weiner’s and Abedin’s wedding.)

In 2008, Dr. Mumen Muhammad wrote about why Huma vowed to stay with Hillary even if the latter were to lose the presidential nomination to Obama:

Abedin assures in press releases of her continuance on the path with Hillary Clinton, even if Clinton failed as a candidate. The candidate’s aides and other influential figures in the Democratic Party assure that they do not disregard Abedin running for election or taking her position in the political arena with the help in successive political administrations of the Clinton family itself [emphasis added].

Hillary Clinton signed a document less than one month prior to her trip to Saudi Arabia with Huma that lifted the ban on Tariq Ramadan, allowing him entry into the United States. (Ramadan is the grandson of the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, Hasan al-Banna, and has ties to Islamic terrorist groups.) The Clinton family played a key role in promoting Fethullah Gülen, the extremely powerful Turkish imam and notorious Islamist conspirator, as he fled Turkey for the United States after attempting to overthrow Turkey’s secular government. (He was indicted on this charge in 2000.) In 2008, the former president heaped praise on Gülen, giving him a clean slate. Gülen has been given refuge and has even had sermons aired on Turkish television during which he explained to his followers how to best seize power from the Turkish government:

You must move in the arteries of the system without anyone noticing your existence until you reach all the power centers… until the conditions are ripe….Until that time, any step taken would be too early — like breaking an egg without waiting the full forty days for it to hatch. [emphasis added].

The philosophy of our service is that we open a house somewhere and, with the patience of a spider, we lay our web to wait for people to get caught in the web; and we teach those who do [emphasis added].

Serving with Huma’s brother as an Oxford Centre trustee is Abdullah Gül, Turkey’s [current] president himself. [Gül, who poses as a moderate but has strong Islamist roots] considers himself a follower of Fethullah Gülen, according to Wikileaks.

Besides the Abedin family’s numerous Islamist connections, another thing that raises red flags is the lack of Muslim outrage over Huma’s marriage to a Jewish man. Given how well-known the Abedins are in the Islamic world (and in the Islamist world), how is it that Huma was able to marry a non-Muslim, which is absolutely prohibited in Muslim law? Even in the West, there have been “honor killings” of girls from Muslim families for dating a non-Muslim, much less marrying one. (Note: A non-Muslim woman is allowed to marry a Muslim man — because the man is dominant in Islam. However, the reverse — a Muslim woman, such as Huma Abedin, marrying a non-Muslim man, such as Anthony Weiner, is absolutely forbidden by shariah because such an arrangement puts a non-Muslim in a position of dominance over a Muslim — which, in Islam, is intolerable.)

Since the penalty for such apostasy is death, why has Huma not been the victim of an “honor killing”? Ex-Muslim Walid Shoebat offers two possible explanations. One is that Huma and her family are using taqiyya — the obligation of a devout Muslim to lie and dissemble when dealing with non-Muslims in order to advance the greater cause of Islam. That would mean that Huma has been given a “pass” in service of the greater Islamist/Muslim Brotherhood goal: to infiltrate the highest levels of our government.

A second possible explanation is that Anthony Weiner might have converted to Islam. This is not as unlikely as it sounds at first blush, especially given that Weiner was raised as a secular Jew. New York imam Omar Abu-Namous, a close associate of Ground Zero mosque imam Faisal Abdul Rauf, encouraged Huma, in the wake of the recent scandals, to stand by her husband — but such advice would not be expected from an imam if Huma were in fact married to a non-Muslim.

As corruptive of our culture — and fraught with the potential for political blackmail — as Anthony Weiner’s peccadilloes have been, they pale in comparison to the potential dangers created by his wife, Huma Abedin, being a top, trusted aide to the Secretary of State of the United States. Can you say “Alger Hiss“?

Algeria is concerned by a noticeably increased Al-Qaeda presence in neighboring Libya and worried militant groups could lay their hands on weapons circulating in the country, a senior official said on Tuesday.Abdelkader Messahel, Algerian Deputy Foreign Minister said he was worried “particularly through the increasingly noticeable presence of AQIM (Al-Qaeda’s north African wing) in Libya and the increasingly noticeable circulation of weapons which can be exploited by terrorist groups.”

“Everybody has noticed, and we are not the only ones, that there are a lot of weapons circulating in Libya and this situation, if it persists, will aggravate the situation in the Sahel,” he said.

Messahel stressed Algeria’s opposition to foreign military intervention in Libya, which it has said goes beyond the United Nations resolution allowing foreign states to intervene to protect civilians.

Messahel isn’t the only one fearful. Admiral James Stavridis, NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander in Europe, said that American intelligence had picked up “flickers” of terrorist activity among the rebel groups. From London’s Telegraph via Vlad Tepes Blog:

…[T]he emerging plan being discussed for the political future of Libya [is being] undermined by the growing military doubts over the make-up of the rebel groups.“We are examining very closely the content, composition, the personalities, who are the leaders of these opposition forces,” Admiral Stavridis said in testimony [last week] to the US Senate.

Oh, so now we’re examining who those rebel leaders are. Nice to know we’re staying on top of things.

But even aside from our intelligence findings, we’ve got word straight from the horse’s mouth. The East Austin Voice relays this report which also comes from the Telegraph (say, why do we have to rely on the British press to get these stories, anyway?):

Abdel-Hakim al-Hasidi, the Libyan rebel leader, has said jihadists who fought against allied troops in Iraq are on the front lines of the battle against Muammar Gaddafi’s regime.

…al-Hasidi admitted he had earlier fought against “the foreign invasion” in Afghanistan, before being “captured in 2002 in Peshwar, in Pakistan”. He was later handed over to the US, and then held in Libya before being released in 2008.

US and British government sources said Mr al-Hasidi was a member of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, or LIFG, which killed dozens of Libyan troops in guerrilla attacks around Derna and Benghazi in 1995 and 1996.

Even though the LIFG is not part of the al-Qaeda organisation, the United States military’s West Point academy has said the two share an “increasingly co-operative relationship”. In 2007, documents captured by allied forces from the town of Sinjar, showed LIFG members made up the second-largest cohort of foreign fighters in Iraq, after Saudi Arabia.

Earlier this month, al-Qaeda issued a call for supporters to back the Libyan rebellion, which it said would lead to the imposition of “the stage of Islam” in the country.

But it gets worse. Regardless of how much or how little “official” overlap there may be between the two organizations, al-Qaeda is taking full advantage, as it always does, of the chaos. Uncoverage has this story which, I must warn you in advance, may make sleep difficult tonight:

Last week, the President Deby Itno of nearby Chad was sounding the alarm that Al Qaeda operatives were taking advantage of the chaos caused by the NATO bombings. They are buying Muammar Gaddafi’s chemical weapons. They are reportedly being sold by the Libyan rebels who were able to pillage the nerve gas shells and other containers after the storage areas were bombed by the coalition.

“The Islamists of al-Qaeda took advantage of the pillaging of arsenals in the rebel zone to acquire arms, including surface-to-air missiles, which were then smuggled into their sanctuaries in Tenere,” a desert region of the Sahara that stretches from northeast Niger to western Chad, Deby said in the interview.

“This is very serious. AQIM is becoming a genuine army, the best equipped in the region,” he said.

His claim was echoed by officials in other countries in the region who said that they were worried that al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) might have acquired “heavy weapons”, thanks to the insurrection.

“We have sure information. We are very worried for the sub-region,” a Malian security source who did not want to be named said.

AQIM originated as an armed Islamist resistance movement to the secular Algerian government.

It now operates mainly in Algeria, Mauritania, Mali and Niger, where it has attacked military targets and taken civilian hostages, particularly Europeans, some of whom it has killed.

“We have the same information,” about heavy weapons, including SAM 7 missiles, a military source from Niger said.

“It is very worrying. This overarming is a real danger for the whole zone,” he added.”

“A convoy of eight Toyotas full of weapons travelled a few days ago through Chad and Niger and reached northern Mali,” the official said.

“We know that this is not the first convoy and that it is still ongoing. Several military barracks have been pillaged in this region [eastern Libya] with their arsenals and weapons stores and the elements of AQIM who were present could not have failed to profit from this opportunity.”

West [cited] three recent operations similar in nature to Libya: Lebanon, Bosnia, and Somalia. In all of these operations, West maintains, the military objectives were not clear and American forces were under different command entities, chosen for political reasons not tactical purposes. Oh yeah, another thing they had in common, West reminds us, was that none of them ended well.

West asks several questions… regarding our operations in Libya:

1) Who are the rebels?

2) Where did the rebels get their weapons from?

3) What is the rebels’ command structure?

4) Why was the attack launched while Congress was on a week-long recess?

… and launched while our “president” was jetting off to Rio. You’d think that in wartime — with not one, not two, but now, three “kinetic military actions” going on — that maybe, just maybe the “commander in chief” could be bothered to spend some time in the War Room.

A potentially explosive admission by federal prosecutors in the pending sentencing of Ahmed Muhammed Dhakane in a San Antonio federal courtroom could aid the case of border states looking to take the initiative to stem the flood of illegal immigrants coming into the U.S.

In this court filing… prosecutors admit that Dhakane, who ran a human smuggling ring based in Brazil for the Somali Al-Shabaab terrorist group, transported “violent jihadists” into the country. He stated that “he believed they would fight against the U.S. if the jihad moved from overseas locations to the U.S. mainland.” (p. 7)

And Dhakane is just the latest one that we know about. There have been many others.

Just last year Homeland Security authorities put out an alert concerning a group of terror-tied Somalis who were attempting to enter the country through Mexico. Then last May another terror alert was issued for a known Al-Shabaab official, Mohamed Ali, who was suspected of trying to cross the border from Mexico. And in February 2010, a Virginia convert to Islam who was in contact with Al-Shabaab officials, Anthony Joseph Tracy, was charged for his role in an international smuggling ring that brought at least 200 Somalis into the U.S. on Cuban travel documents.

Other terrorist operatives are known to have successfully crossed the border:

In February 2001, Mahmoud Kourani crossed the border from Tijuana in the trunk of a car, eventually settling in Dearborn, Michigan. Kourani, who federal prosecutors claimed had received training in weapons, intelligence, and spy craft in Iran, bribed a Mexican embassy official in Beirut to obtain a visa. Kourani’s brother is known to be Hezbollah’s security chief in southern Lebanon.

In December 2002, Salim Boughader was arrested for smuggling 200 Lebanese, including Hezbollah operatives, across the border. Boughader had previously worked for Hezbollah’s Al-Manar TV satellite network.

In July 2004, Farida Goolam Mohamed Ahmed was arrested at a Texas airport boarding a flight to New York. According to the Washington Post, she was connected to a Pakistani terrorist group. Believed to be ferrying instructions to U.S.-based al-Qaeda operatives, authorities issued a terror alert for Washington D.C., New York, and New Jersey.

In January 2005, two Hamas operatives, Mahmoud Khalil and Ziad Saleh, were arrested as part of a criminal enterprise in Los Angeles. Both had entered the U.S. after paying a smuggler $10,000 each to take them across the border.

Rep. John Culberson said in November 2005 that an Iraqi al-Qaeda operative on the terror watch list was captured living near the Mexico-Texas border.

Hezbollah have been known by the Mexican and U.S. governments to operate in Mexico City. Mexican converts to Islam, whose numbers are increasing alarmingly, have adopted many political viewpoints common in the Muslim Middle East, such as anti-Jewish ideology and support for Hamas.

Two factors are particularly aggravating the danger: the refusal of the federal government to enforce the border; and the increasing cooperation between Latin American drug cartels and terrorist groups, including Hezbollah and al-Qaeda.

With cartel violence already spilling across the border, and U.S. Border Patrol agents armed with beanbags being gunned down in the field by smuggling operatives, when might we see terrorist groups attempting to open up a new front against the U.S. across the vast stretches of our unguarded border?… As DOJ has admitted in the Dhakane case, terrorist operatives are already inside the U.S. and are prepared to go operational at the command of their leadership. If the issue of homegrown terrorism is already keeping Attorney General Eric Holder awake at night, why aren’t similar concerns being translated into action to defend Americans from cross-border terror threats?

The U.S. has lost track of many former Guantanamo detainees who had been sent home to the Middle East and North Africa, a sign that unrest in the region is disrupting critical terror-fighting relationships America has built up since the Sept. 11 attacks, U.S. officials say.

The flow of information from Libya, Yemen and other governments in the region about the whereabouts and activities of the former Guantanamo detainees, along with other Islamists released from local prisons, has slowed or even stopped, the officials say. U.S. officials say they fear that former detainees will re-join al Qaeda and other Islamist groups.

…For nearly a decade, the U.S. has conducted a major cloak-and-missile campaign against al Qaeda, teaming up with friendly Arab leaders to swap intelligence, interrogate suspects, train commandos or carry out military strikes from Morocco to Iraq. The value of these partnerships was evident last fall when Saudi Arabia tipped off U.S. and European intelligence agencies about an imminent plot to blow up U.S.-bound cargo planes by al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, the terror group’s affiliate in Yemen.

Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula's leadership. Two of the four are former Guantanamo detainees.

Now popular movements sweeping the region have knocked some counterterrorism allies from power, and left others too distracted or politically vulnerable to risk open cooperation with the U.S.

Intelligence-sharing has already slowed in some areas as the U.S. struggles to identify reliable counterparts in reshuffled governments.

“It’s difficult to share information when you don’t know who the players are,” said another U.S. official.

The upheaval has upended U.S. foreign policy in the region, with old friends shaken or gone and the allegiance of emerging leaders uncertain. The effects on counterterrorism efforts are one of the aftershocks that worry the intelligence community the most.

…In Yemen, U.S. and European officials are increasingly concerned that former Guantanamo detainees are no longer under much, if any, government surveillance. At the same time, they have detected an uptick in activity by al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. Another senior counterterrorism official said the group is “very actively” plotting new strikes against the U.S. during the lull in American and Yemeni counterterrorism operations. Military strikes by American fighter jets and cruise missiles have been on hold since last May. The current unrest means Yemen is unlikely to allow them to resume anytime soon.

The fear, according to senior U.S. officials, is that al Qaeda plots that would normally be thwarted could now slip through the intelligence-collection cracks.